Award Winners / Artist Profile

Ann Leda Shapiro

About the Artist

Ann Leda Shapiro (Vashon Island) grew up in New York City, next door to the Museum of Natural History and across the park from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She spent the Sixties at art school in San Francisco, protested the Vietnam War, participated in consciousness raising groups and embraced feminism.

As an academic vagabond (token woman university art instructor) Ann has lived on a desert ranch in Arizona, a miner’s cabin in the Colorado Mountains, and on a ship that sailed around the world for the semester-at-sea program.

She has exhibited her paintings and drawings at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Berkeley Museum in California, the Puget Sound Credit Union on Vashon Island and at the Seattle Art Museum as part of the permanent collection.

Ann volunteered at an AIDS clinic in Texas where she was introduced to Chinese medicine. Inspired to research and illustrate Chinese medical history, she enrolled in acupuncture school, completed the drawings and became a certified acupuncturist.

Ann has traveled extensively from Europe to Viet Nam to Vashon Island where she has maintained an art studio in the shadow of Mount Rainier for the past twenty-five years.

Information included above was provided by artist at the time of application.

From the Artist

I am appreciative beyond words to have been selected for the Twining Humber Award. To have my work seriously considered and seen and to receive recognition and financial support is a first for me.

I thought the phone call was a solicitation for a donation but instead I was congratulated.